Mary George of Allnorthover. Lavinia Greenlaw
in a rush about bands and painters. He was nineteen, an art student at college on the coast. His big sister worked for a gallery in London. He hated provincial life. The country was, in any case, dying, let alone the countryside. And what about Mary? She took the cigarette packet on which he had written his phone number and agreed, quite sincerely, with everything he said.
As soon as they got to the roundabout, a rusting maroon Cadillac emerged from the sliproad and stopped. A window rolled down and Julie Lacey yelled ‘Mary George! You hopeless cow! We’ll give you a lift then.’ Drenched with embarrassment, Mary kissed Daniel’s cheek and let Julie pull her into the car. Julie had a pile of papers on her knee and a large calculator in her other hand. Barry Spence was driving, a cigar between his teeth. Now and then he passed a sheet of paper from a heap on the passenger seat back to Julie who rapidly punched the calculator keys, jotted down numbers and sighed.
‘It’s hopeless, Barry. Whichever way I run it, the depreciation of your fixed assets doesn’t even dent the profit margin. That’s a hell of a bite on your neck, you dirty bitch! What about on-costs, Bal?’ Another flurry of pages was thrown into the back.
As they drove out of Camptown onto the Heath, a tall figure loomed in the middle of the road and Barry braked hard. He leapt out, half angry, half afraid, while Julie squawked and Mary covered her eyes. It was JonJo. He got into the front, collecting up Barry’s papers. ‘I’ll keep hold of these for you, Mr Spence.’ He said it so politely, Barry could not take offence.
‘I’ll drop you at the end of the lane and you can walk to the farm from there.’
JonJo’s white makeup had faded and run, and his skin beneath was just as pale. ‘Thank you so much.’ He lit a cigarette in a plastic tortoiseshell holder, and turned to Julie and Mary in the back. ‘Nice to see you two being friends again.’ He raised an eyebrow.
‘Couldn’t leave the blind cow on the road with god knows who, could we?’ Julie replied.
‘Bitch,’ Mary mumbled, not looking round but smiling.
‘Cow,’ retorted Julie, also smiling as she continued with her sums.
Barry Spence dropped Mary off on the Green. She hesitated by the gate as the downstairs lights were still on. She pulled out her glasses and saw Stella at the table, talking to someone who was leaving the room. Then the front door opened and Christie came down the path. He looked at Mary as if he’d never seen her before and hurried past.
Mary wanted to carry the evening unbroken to bed. Above all, she didn’t want Stella to see her kissed face. Even in the car, next to Julie who had barely glanced up from her calculations, Mary had turned away and pushed her head out of the open window. She was sure that anyone who cared to look would notice her swollen mouth, the grainy bruise on her throat, his breath in her breath, the tiny blister gathering just inside the edge of the middle of her upper lip. It’s like a flood, she thought, but fire. It comes from inside and out. A bowl of water overturning in a bowl of water.
‘Sit down, love,’ said Stella, before Mary was even in sight. The living room was almost filled by a pine table that her mother kept frighteningly bare. The dresser that ran along one wall and scraped under the beams was crammed with crockery, cutlery, paper, tools and paints, all ordered so meticulously that the room still looked spacious.
Rather than join her mother, Mary curled up in an undersized armchair by the fireplace. Stella didn’t look up. She was bent forward, her head almost on the table but just caught in her hands. Mary stared into the empty grate. There were no ornaments on the mantelpiece, not even a ticking clock. Her mother now seemed neither tall nor still. One of her feet tapped rapidly against the floor.
‘You saw Christie was here,’ Stella began and the tapping paused, as if those five words had exhausted her. ‘… About Tom.’ Mary didn’t want to hear about Tom but her mother was talking to her in such an oddly unguarded tone, that she waited.
Stella’s fair colouring, though now rather vague, was consistent. Her thick hair, her stone-grey eyes and smooth skin made such an even surface that people never asked how she was. Her features were well arranged, locked in place, and certainly not given to grotesqueness. Yet as Mary watched, her mouth twisted, just for a moment but so extremely that the effect was not only violent but comical. Mary had a sudden vision of her mother spitting out frogs like someone punished for telling lies in a fairytale.
‘I wanted to ask you, about the reservoir. All that. Just to be clear.’
Mary was shaking. ‘I didn’t do anything on purpose, Mum … I didn’t know he was there. If I had, I wouldn’t have walked …’
‘No one’s blaming you,’ Stella said, sounding like a teacher intent on a confession. ‘Tom is agitated. He thinks you …’
‘He can’t think anything!’ Mary was shaking and got up to leave but Stella rose too and closed the door.
‘To him, to all of us, you are an important part of the picture.’
‘It’s not my picture, though, is it?’ Mary had surprised herself and now felt scared.
Stella lost patience. Her head snapped back as her fist smashed down on the table. The bangles on her arm chinked – ridiculously, Mary thought, and as ever felt ashamed of her mother whose long skirts and dresses, shawls and scarves, beads, feathers, ribbons and lace looked like costumes rather than clothes. At primary school, the other children had called her mother a witch. (‘A nice witch,’ Julie had assured her and it was true that she was kind and helped anyone she could, and other children adored her.)
‘Damn it, Mary! You were not supposed to be there!’
Mary couldn’t tell if this was admonition or regret. ‘I was only walking home,’ she muttered.
‘But you were supposed to be in school!’
‘School? What do you mean?’ Mary was confused.
Stella gave a hissing sigh. ‘There’s a law in this country that says six-year-olds have to go to school.’
‘Six-year-olds? What’s that to do with me? Mum, it was Saturday morning, right? I cut across from Ingfield, round the water. I didn’t know who he was! I didn’t even know he was there!’
‘Ah.’ This time, Stella’s exhalation was hard and sharp, the sound someone might make after running into a wall.
‘Don’t be angry, Mum, please!’ Mary was clutching her cardigan to her with both hands. ‘I’m not six, I’m seventeen and all I was doing was walking home and stopping to look at the water.’
‘When was this?’
‘That Saturday he followed me home. When else?’ Stella gave a very small nod which made Mary feel, briefly, like explaining herself. ‘There’s a tree, see, with a branch stretching out over the water. I like to go along it. He saw me there. He said I was near the house.’
‘And?’
‘I walk out along this bough.’
‘You little fool, you could fall in and drown!’
‘But I don’t fall. I keep walking.’
‘And then?’
‘And what?’
Stella stood up and Mary stood up to meet her. Neither raised her voice. When Mary said nothing, Stella lowered her eyes, and asked almost timidly, ‘Did you see anything?’
Mary was about to begin but changed her mind. ‘I had my eyes shut,’ she whispered and ran up to her room.
‘What did you say?’ Stella followed so fast that she filled the doorway before Mary could shut herself in. She spoke so evenly that Mary felt sick. ‘It’s not a joke or a game. Christie’s been and Tom is very fragile. What he has been through, what we have all been through. Your father. I just want to go over it again, to get things straight.’ Mary was shaking her head. ‘I know you were only six but you do remember, don’t